Alexander Vampilov duck hunting analysis. Extracurricular reading lesson based on Alexander Vampilov's play "Duck Hunt"

"Duck Hunt"

A fairly young and physically healthy man (in the story he is about thirty years old) feels deeply tired of life. There are no values ​​for him. From Zilov’s first conversation with a friend, it turns out that yesterday he caused some kind of scandal, the essence of which he no longer remembers. It turns out he offended someone. But he doesn't really care. “They’ll survive, right?” - he says to his friend Dima.

Suddenly, Zilov is brought a funeral wreath with a ribbon on which touching memorial words are written: “To the unforgettable Viktor Alexandrovich Zilov, who was untimely burned out at work, from inconsolable friends.”

Initially, this event seems like a bad joke, but in the process of further development of events, the reader understands that Zilov really buried himself alive: he drinks, makes scandals and does everything to arouse the disgust of people to whom he was close and dear until recently.

The interior of Zilov's room has one important artistic detail - a large plush cat with a bow around its neck, a gift from Vera. This is a kind of symbol of unrealized hopes. After all, Zilov and Galina could have a happy family with children and a cozy, well-established life. It is no coincidence that after the housewarming party, Galina invites Zilov to have a child, although she understands that he does not need one.

The basic principle of relationships with people for Zilov is unbridled lies, the purpose of which is the desire to whitewash oneself and denigrate others. So, for example, inviting his boss Kushak to a housewarming party, who at first does not want to go on a visit without his wife, Zilov informs Galina that Vera, with whom he is supposedly in love, has been invited for him. In fact, Vera is the mistress of Zilov himself. In turn, Victor pushes Kushak to court Vera: “Nonsense. Act boldly, don't stand on ceremony. This is all done on the fly. Grab the bull by the horns."

Expressive in the play is the image of Sayapin's wife Valeria, whose ideal is bourgeois happiness. She equates family ties with material wealth. “Tolechka, if in six months we don’t move into such an apartment, I will run away from you, I swear to you,” she declares to her husband at the Zilovs’ housewarming party.

Aptly depicted by A.V. Vampilov and another expressive female character in the play - the image of Vera, who is also, in essence, unhappy. She has long lost faith in the possibility of finding a reliable life partner and calls all men the same (Alikami). At the housewarming party, Verochka constantly shocks everyone with her tactlessness and attempt to dance on Zilov’s table. A woman tries to seem ruder and more cheeky than she really is. Obviously, this helps her drown out her longing for real human happiness. Kuzakov understands this best of all, who tells Zilov: “Yes, Vitya, it seems to me that she is not at all who she claims to be.”

The housewarming scene uses an important compositional move. All the guests give the Zilovs gifts. Valeria torments the owner of the house for a long time before giving a gift, and asks what he loves most. This scene plays a big role in revealing the image of Zilov. Galina confesses that she has not felt her husband’s love for a long time. He has a consumer attitude towards her.

Vera, asking about her mistress with a grin, also understands that Victor is indifferent to her and her visit does not give him much pleasure. During the conversation, it turns out that Zilov does not like his job as an engineer, although he can still improve his business reputation. This is evidenced by Kushak’s remark: “He lacks a business spirit, that’s true, but he’s a capable guy...”. The Sayapins give Zilov the hunting equipment that the hero dreams of. The image of duck hunting in the work is undoubtedly symbolic in nature. It can be seen as a dream of a worthwhile task, which Zilov turns out to be incapable of. It is no coincidence that Galina, who knows his character more deeply than others, notices that the main thing for him is getting ready and talking.

A peculiar test for Zilov is a letter from his father, who asks him to come to see him. It turns out that Victor has not been with his parents for a long time and is very cynical about the tearful letters of his old father: “He sends out such letters to all ends and lies there, like a dog, waiting. Relatives, fools, come over, oh, oh, and he’s happy. He lays down and lies down, then, lo and behold, he gets up - he’s alive, healthy and drinking vodka.” At the same time, the son does not even know exactly how old his father is (he remembers that he is over seventy). Zilov has a choice: go on vacation to his father in September or realize his old dream of duck hunting. He chooses the second. As a result, the unfortunate old man will die without seeing his son.

Before our eyes, Zilov destroys Galina’s last hopes for personal happiness. He is indifferent to her pregnancy, and the woman, seeing this, gets rid of the child. Tired of endless lies, she leaves her husband for her childhood friend, who still loves her.

Troubles are brewing at work: Zilov handed over an article with false information to his boss, and also forced his friend Sayapin to sign it. The hero is facing dismissal. But he doesn’t really worry about it.

In a cafe with the sentimental name “Forget-Me-Not”, Zilov often appears with new women. It is there that he invites young Irina, who sincerely falls in love with him. His wife finds him and his girlfriend in a cafe.

Having learned about Galina’s desire to leave him, Zilov tries to keep her and even promises to take her hunting with him, but when he sees that Irina has come to him, he quickly switches. However, other women whom he once attracted to him with false promises eventually leave him. Vera is going to marry Kuzakov, who takes her seriously. It is no coincidence that she begins to call him by name, and not Alik, like other men.

Only at the end of the play does the viewer learn what kind of scandal Zilov created in Forget-Me-Not: he gathered his friends there, invited Irina and began to insult everyone in turn, grossly violating the rules of decency.

In the end, he also offends the innocent Irina. And when the waiter Dima, with whom the hero is going on the long-awaited duck hunt, stands up for the girl, he insults him too, calling him a lackey.

After this whole disgusting story, Zilov is actually trying to commit suicide. He is saved by Kuzakov and Sayapin. The economical Sayapin, dreaming of his own apartment, is trying to distract Zilov with something. He says it's time to refinish the floors. Victor responds by giving him the keys to the apartment. The waiter Dima, despite being offended, invites him to go duck hunting. He allows him to take the boat. Then he drives away people who are somehow trying to fight for his life. At the end of the play, Zilov throws himself on the bed and either cries or laughs. And most likely he cries and laughs at himself. Then he finally calms down and calls Dima, agreeing to go hunting with him.

What is the further fate of the hero? It is quite obvious that he needs to rethink his attitude towards life in general, towards the people with whom he communicates. Perhaps Zilov will still be able to overcome his mental crisis and return to normal life. But most likely the hero is doomed to quickly find his death, since he cannot overcome his own selfishness and does not see a goal for which it is worth continuing life. The loss of spiritual and moral supports is a typical feature of the generation of the period of stagnation. For centuries, people's lives have been subject to the norms of religious morality. At the beginning of the 20th century, public thought was driven by the idea of ​​​​creating a bright future, a socially just government system. During the Great Patriotic War, the main task was to protect the native land from invaders, then - post-war construction. In the sixties and seventies there were no socio-political problems of this magnitude. Perhaps this is why a generation of people has formed who are characterized by the loss of family ties and the meaning of friendships. The influence of the church on the spiritual life of man by this time had been lost. Norms of religious morality were not observed. And few people believed in the idea of ​​building a bright future. The reason for Zilov’s spiritual crisis is the awareness of the worthlessness of his life, the lack of a real goal, since the so-called duck hunt, which he constantly dreams of, is more of an attempt to escape from life’s problems than a real cause for which he can sacrifice everything else.

Let's look at one famous play and analyze it. "Duck Hunt" (Vampilov A.V.) was created between 1965 and 1967. This time was extremely important, turning point, eventful and bright in the life of the playwright. This was his birth as an artist. At this time, Vampilov fully felt his own poetic power (“Duck Hunt”). The analysis summarized in this article will help you better understand this difficult play.

Three layers in the work

The work is complex, original, and its structure is sophisticated. This is a play in memory. The technique of using them as a special form of dramatic storytelling was very common in the 60s. As analysis shows, “Duck Hunt” (Vampilov) consists of three layers: the layer of the present, memories and the intermediate, borderline layer of visions.

In the layer of memories there are several rather intense storylines. The main character starts an affair with a girl who falls in love with him. Having discovered the betrayal, the wife leaves. When, it seems, nothing prevents Zilov from reuniting with his young lover, he suddenly gets heavily drunk and makes a scandal, insulting the girl and his friends.

At the same time, another plot is developing. Zilov gets a new apartment. He sets up his boss with his ex-girlfriend. At the same time, this girl begins an affair with another friend of Zilov. The main character has troubles at work - he slipped a fake report to his superiors. He shied away from responsibility for what he did. As you can see, this layer is full of events. Nevertheless, it does not carry much drama.

The plot of the memoirs is unusually varied in everyday details. The hero’s father, whom he had not seen for a long time, dies; Zilov’s wife ends up having an affair with her former classmate. Finally, the main character dreams of duck hunting.

Another layer of action is the layer of visions of the hero, who is wondering how his colleagues, friends, and girlfriends will react to the news of his death. At first he imagines it, and then it seems inevitable to him. This layer consists of 2 interludes. Their text, except for two or three phrases, is almost completely identical verbally. However, in terms of emotional sign they are completely opposite. In the first case, the death scene that the hero imagines is of a comic nature, and in the second, there is not a shadow of a smile in its tone or mood. The drama thus develops between a half-joking plan to commit suicide, which was inspired by the “original” gift from Kuzakov and Sayapin, and an attempt to carry out this plan seriously.

Confessional nature of the play

Let's continue the analysis. “Duck Hunt” (Vampilov) is a work that has a confessional character. The work is structured as a confession that lasts throughout the entire play. It presents the hero's life in retrospective sequence - starting from the events of two months ago and ending with the present day. The conflict in the work is not external, but internal - moral, lyrical. The tragedy intensifies as the hero's memories and awareness of them in the present get closer in time.

Zilov's memories constitute a complete, comprehensive, integral picture. They lack a cause-and-effect relationship, despite their coherence. They are motivated by external impulses.

Main character

The main character is Viktor Zilov in the play "Duck Hunt" (Vampilov). is largely based on the worldview of this hero. We observe the events of the play precisely through the prism of Zilov’s memories. A lot of them happen in 1.5 months of his life. Their apogee is the funeral wreath, which was presented by friends to the “hero of his time”, who “burned out untimely” at work.

The meaning of remarks

The work is expressed through stage directions. This is traditional for dramaturgy. Vampilov’s remarks are quite common. They place a qualitative emphasis, as, for example, in the case of Irina: the main feature in the heroine is sincerity. Directions indicate to the director how to interpret a particular character.

The role of dialogues in expressing the author's position

An analysis of A. V. Vampilov’s play “Duck Hunt” would be incomplete if we did not note the significance of the dialogues. They also show the author's attitude towards the characters. The assessment characteristics here are mainly given by Zilov. This cynic and unpredictable frivolous citizen is allowed a lot, just as jesters were allowed at all times. It’s not for nothing that even his closest friends joke and laugh at Zilov, sometimes very angrily. Those around him have various feelings for this hero, but not friendly ones. This is jealousy, hatred, envy. And Victor deserved them exactly as much as any person can deserve.

Zilov mask

When guests ask Zilov what he loves most, he does not know what to answer. However, friends (as well as the state, party, society) know better than him - most of all, Zilov loves hunting. One emphasizes the tragicomic nature of the situation (the entire play is replete with such details). Until the end of the memories, Zilov does not take off his hunting accessories, like a mask. This is not the first time that the leitmotif of a mask appears in the work of this author in “Duck Hunt.” We see a similar technique in earlier plays ("The Story with the Master Page", "The Eldest Son"). Vampilian characters often resort to labels, since labeling them frees them from thoughts and the need to make decisions.

Duck hunting in the life of the main character

For Victor, duck hunting is the embodiment of freedom and dreams. It is collected already a month before the cherished day and awaits the hunt as the beginning of a new life, deliverance, a period of respite. On the one hand, this is an introduction to nature, which is so valuable for modern man. At the same time, hunting is one of the most monstrous symbols of murder, which culture does not take into account. This is a murder legalized by civilization, which has been elevated to the rank of entertainment, and respectable one at that. The double essence of hunting is communion with the pure, eternal natural principle, purification through it, and murder is realized in the play. The theme of death permeates the entire action.

For Zilov, hunting is the only moment in the life of the spirit. This is an opportunity to break away from everyday life, everyday life, vanity, laziness, lies, which he cannot overcome on his own. This is the world of an ideal dream, high and not compromised anywhere. In this world, his poor, nasty, lied to soul feels good, it straightens up and comes to life, uniting in a bright and united harmony with all living things.

Vampilov constructs the action of the play in such a way that Zilov’s guide, his constant companion into this world, is the Waiter. His figure deprives Zilov’s utopia of meaning, high poetry, and purity.

"Heroes of their time"

The work that interests us tells about the values ​​of the “thaw” generation, or rather, about their collapse. Let's analyze Vampilov's play "Duck Hunt" from the point of view of the characters. The tragicomic existence of the heroes of the work - the Sayapins, Gali, Kushak, Kuzakov, Vera - speaks of their lack of self-confidence and the fragility of the surrounding reality, seemingly determined by society forever. In the character system there is no division into positive and negative. There is Dima, self-confident, Zilov, suffering from the injustice of life, defiant Vera and Sash, in eternal fear. There are unhappy people whose lives for some reason did not work out.

When analyzing the play “Duck Hunt” by Vampilov, one should take into account the personality of the author. Vampilov is the last romantic of Russian drama of the Soviet period. He developed as a personality in the second half of the 50s. At this time, the goals, slogans, ideals, aspirations of society, quite humane in themselves, seemed to be about to begin to connect with real life, to acquire meaning and weight in it. Vampilov worked when processes of demarcation between the values ​​proclaimed everywhere and real life began in society. The terrible thing was not that the meaning of ideals was destroyed in this way, but that the meaning of morality as such was destroyed. Vampilov was the son of the time that gave birth to him. He longed to know where a person should go, how he lives, how he should live. He needed to give answers to these questions for himself, and he was the first of the playwrights to see that life had come to its final limit. And behind it, these questions no longer have the usual answer.

Vampilov is a master of open endings. An analysis of Vampilov's play "Duck Hunt" shows that this work also ends ambiguously. We never know whether the main character is laughing or crying in the last scene.

Truth of the times

We are accustomed to using the expression “truth of character,” meaning that the writer did not falsify anything, did not hide anything, and depicted a certain social type that developed in reality. Reading the play that he created (“Duck Hunt”), analyzing it, one can feel pity for the person whose “truth” turned out to be too defenseless. As a rule, conversations about morality are boring. The author of the work did not know how to be boring. All of his plays, including Duck Hunt, are characterized by the intensity of the protagonist. The work makes us think about life itself, and not just about art and literature. The author wanted to understand the basic laws called the truth of time. Let us note one more thought to complete the analysis. “Duck Hunt” (Vampilov) is a work that gave birth to the rhythm of time. He lives inside, and not outside, each of us, so the appearance of “heroes of their time” is natural.

This concludes the analysis of Vampilov’s play “Duck Hunt”. A short work - but so much meaning! We can talk about this play for quite a long time, discovering more and more of its features.

Genre features of plays A. Vampilova

"Eldest Son" and "Duck Hunt"

Creativity A.V. Vampilova occupies a worthy place in the history of Russian literature. Plays by A.V. Vampilov form an original, multifaceted and vibrant artistic phenomenon, rightly called by researchers “Vampilov’s Theatre”.

Presented with plays of various genres, ranging from lyrical comedy to psychological drama, “Vampilov’s theater” has a profound psychological impact, forcing viewers and readers to rethink their own existence and the philosophical foundations of life.

Alexander Valentinovich Vampilov died early. Almost unnoticed during his lifetime, praised after death, A. Vampilov became one of the mysterious figures in the history of Soviet and Russian drama. He had a significant influence on the development of modern drama.

“The Theater of Alexander Vampilov” is considered as a developing artistic phenomenon, in which the social and moral problems of its time move into the plane of universal “eternal questions” of spiritual existence. It should be noted that most researchers of the dramaturgy of A.V. Vampilov find it difficult to accurately determine the genre of his plays, speaking only about their genre uniqueness and highlighting the presence of various genre forms in him, which leads, in turn, to the emergence of such terms as “multi-genre”, “genre synthesis”, “genre polyphonism”, "genre syncretism".

A.V. Vampilov, already in his early play-stories of the late 50s - early 60s, shows the genre originality of his dramaturgy, experimenting with dramatic genres and creating an innovative play based on the traditions of the lyrical drama of I.S. Turgenev, satirical comedy by N.V. Gogol and psychological dramaturgy of A.P. Chekhov, building the action as a psychological experiment.

The playwright owes his real theatrical fame mainly to the play “The Eldest Son,” which for several years occupied a leading place in his repertoire.

Freedom of artistic invention and poetics distinguishes the play “The Eldest Son”; the play gravitates toward non-everyday, phantasmagoric, parable forms that take them beyond the scope of everyday anecdote. The play “The Eldest Son” contains very specific and recognizable motifs of the era. The theme of sudden or false discovery of relatives, widespread in world drama, also gained its historically determined popularity during these years.

On the one hand, the comedy is downright hilarious. A. Vampilov uses such well-known comedic plot development techniques as eavesdropping, passing off one character as another, imposture, and sincere belief in a hoax. Vampilov masterfully masters the techniques of creating comic situations and characters. He knows how to introduce his unique hero, not without comic features, into the most absurd situations.

On the other hand, the play “The Eldest Son” reproduces the atmosphere of an unsettled life, disintegrating family ties as psychologically accurate and true as was typical of the psychological drama of the 60s of the 20th century.

Due to the fact that the comedy simultaneously sets several moral and aesthetic perspectives on the depiction of reality, “The Eldest Son” acquires the features of a tragicomedy, which complicates the genre of lyrical comedy.

The young playwright fits the play into the classical trinity. And at the same time, there is no sense of any dramatic predetermination in it. On the contrary, it is characterized by absolute spontaneity, the unintentionality of what is happening: Busygin and Silva actually get to know each other before our eyes, not to mention the Sarafanov family, with whom both the viewer and the characters get to know each other at the same time.

The comedy “The Eldest Son” is built on a rigid paradoxical breakdown, a paradoxical transformation of events that arises from the “wrong”, non-canonical reaction of the heroes to circumstances.

From the very beginning, the play “Duck Hunt” gained a reputation as the most mysterious and complex play by A.V. Vampilov, including at the level of determining the genre of the work. In "Duck Hunt", the tone of the narrative and the overall sound of the play are serious. “Duck Hunt” is built as a chain of Zilov’s memories.

Consistently staged, but scattered memorable episodes from the hero’s past life present not only to the reader and viewer, but also to Zilov himself, the story of his moral decline. Thanks to this, from the very first episode of the play, the real drama of human life, built on deception, unfolds before us. The drama of Zilov’s life gradually turns into the tragedy of loneliness: indifference or feigned participation of friends, loss of feelings of filial affection, vulgarization of the sincere feelings of a girl in love with him, the departure of his wife... Signs of tragicomedy in the play are obvious (Zilov’s conversation with Galina at the moment of her departure; Zilov’s public denunciation of the vices friends; preparation of Zilov for suicide).

However, the leading methods of constructing a play, creating the genre orientation of the work, are the methods of psychological drama. For example, the hero A.V. Vampilov is shown at a moment of acute mental crisis, shown from the inside, with all his experiences and problems, almost mercilessly turned inside out, psychologically exposed. The focus of the playwright’s attention is on the content of the moral world of his contemporary, while there is no definition of the hero as bad or good, he is internally complex and ambiguous. The ending of “Duck Hunt” is complicated: the play could have been completed twice before the main ending: when Zilov put a gun to his chest or shared property with Sayapin (then this would be more in line with the canons of tragicomedy). The main ending of the play is open-ended and resolved in the traditions of psychological drama.

The play by A.V. Vampilov’s “Duck Hunt” is usually viewed as a socio-psychological drama (less often as a tragicomedy with elements of industrial conflict, farcical and melodramatic inserts), in which the playwright reconsiders the problems of his early works.

In criticism of the 70s - 90s. There has been a tendency to interpret “Duck Hunt” primarily as a drama of loss, since the play consistently exposes value series: the hero realizes, or makes visible for awareness, what could have become a solid support in his life, but is no longer there. And yet, “Duck Hunt” is, first of all, a tragicomedy of existence and self-valued awareness: its conflict is born where reality, taking the form of a mercilessly objective mirror, provides the hero with the opportunity to look at himself from the outside.

With the playwright’s constant attraction to the comedy genre throughout his creative life, tragicomedy nevertheless became the dominant genre of his work.

Faculty of Arts

Essay

In the discipline "History of Russian Literature"

On the topic: “Analysis of the works of A.V. Vampilov"

Completed:

Bukatkin Vladislav Dmitrievich

Checked:

(Professor of the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Studies of St. Petersburg State Unitary Enterprise,

Doctor of Philology, Professor Honorary Professor)

Uspenskaya Anna Viktorovna

St. Petersburg 2014

1. Introduction

2. Analysis of the work “Duck Hunt”

3. Analysis of the work “The Eldest Son”

4. Conclusion

5. List of used literature

Introduction

Literary criticism is one of the oldest branches of philological knowledge. This is a science, but a science of a special kind, practically inseparable from the art of speech it studies. In fact, literary studies, the idea of ​​which is straightforward and the language is poor, will not interest not only a wide audience, but also specialists. And on the contrary, many examples can be given where seemingly purely literary problems worry many. Articles and books by V. Belinsky, D. Pisarev, N. Dobrolyubov, N. Chernyshevsky, A. Grigoriev, Yu. Tynyanov, D. Likhachev, Yu. Lotman became the object of wide public attention, which was facilitated by both the depth and originality of thinking of these authors, so is their ability to write vividly and imaginatively.

It is clear that talent is a necessary condition for any scientific activity: a logical sequence of reasoning and a clear and elegant formulation of conclusions equally characterize the works of outstanding physicists, mathematicians, and biologists. However, in literary criticism the problem of form is especially important. A literary critic is almost a “co-author” of the artist, and the discovery of the possibilities of a literary masterpiece largely depends on the researcher’s talent, taste and tact. An article or book written darkly and sluggishly, which talks about the work of a brilliant stylist, is unlikely to interest anyone.

The drama of the 20th century strives to free itself from the shackles of habitual dramatic categories, not only from the dictates of the unity of time, place, action, but also from such mandatory conditions of old drama as the unidirectionality of time, the indivisibility of the human personality. In the sixties, the freedom and looseness of the dramatic form was inspired by the new, after a very long temporary break, flowering of the art of directing, the search for literature, acquaintance with foreign drama, the influence of cinema, which was experiencing its best years, its freedom in dealing with place and time, “reality” and “dreams”, with the ease with which he objectifies dreams, memories, dreams on the screen. For the sixties, the latter was one of the favorite methods of storytelling: dying visions. Vampilov was one of the first to show innovation in this direction.

Analysis of the work “Duck Hunt”

“Duck Hunt” was written in 1965-1967. These years were extremely important, eventful, bright and turning points in the life of the playwright. At this time, his rebirth took place, no longer as a professional writer, but as an artist who fully felt his poetic power.

“Duck Hunt” in an original, complex and indirect way absorbed the quest of literature, theater and cinema of the sixties. The fact that the sixties in Soviet literature were the heyday of lyricism is as important for the essence of “Duck Hunt” as the golden age of the Russian novel was for the emergence of Chekhov’s drama.

The structure of “Duck Hunt,” despite all the external appearance of the play, is extremely complex and sophisticated. “Duck Hunt” is a play in memoirs. Memoirs as a special form of dramatic storytelling are a very common technique in the sixties. “Duck Hunt” consists of three layers: the layer of the present, the layer of memories and, so to speak, the borderline, intermediate layer-layer of visions.

The layer of memories unfolding within this frame is richer in events, but also does not carry much drama, although several very intense plot lines are intertwined in it: Zilov starts an affair with a pretty girl, the girl falls in love with him, his wife, having discovered his betrayal, leaves, but when, it would seem, nothing interferes with the hero’s happy reunion with his young lover, in the midst of a party, almost an engagement, Zilov gets heavily drunk, causes a scandal, insults his friends and the girl.

At the same time, another plot unfolds: the Hero gets a new apartment and, in gratitude, “sets up” the boss with his ex-girlfriend, at the same time this girlfriend begins an affair with another friend of Zilov. The hero has troubles at work - he slipped a fake report to his superiors, and a friend and colleague betrayed him, evading their joint responsibility for what they had done.

The plot of the memoirs is richly varied with everyday details. The hero’s father, whom he had not seen for a long time, died, the hero’s wife turns out to have either a real or a fictional affair with a former classmate, and finally, the hero constantly dreams about the upcoming vacation, about duck hunting, for which there are no obstacles in the play.

The third layer of action is the layer of Zilov’s visions, wondering how friends, colleagues, girlfriends will perceive the news of his death, at first imaginary, in the end, as it seems to him, inevitable. This layer consists of two interludes, the text of which, with the exception of two or three phrases, almost completely coincides. But, although they coincide verbally, they are absolutely opposite in emotional sign: in the first case, the imaginary scene of death is clearly of a comic and even buffoonish nature, in the second - in its mood, there is not even a shadow of a smile in the tone. But the main thing about them is that these visions seem to objectify the nature of Zilov’s memories. The visions are mocking and malicious, the characters in the play are evil and accurately caricatured, and this moment seems to remove the subjective nature of the hero’s memories, leaving behind them the right to a certain artistic impartiality. The drama unfolds between a half-joking suicide plan, inspired by the “original” gift from Sayapin and Kuzakov, and an attempt to carry it out seriously.

The most important aspect of the play relates to its confessional character. “Duck Hunt” is structured as a confession, which lasts exactly as long as the play lasts, presenting the hero’s life in retrospective sequence - from the depths of two months ago to the present day. The tragedy increases as we approach the time junction of the hero's memories and their awareness in the present, indicating that the conflict here is not external, but internal - lyrical, moral.

Zilov’s memories add up to such a coherent, comprehensive and complete picture of life that the moments that gave rise to them seem, at first glance, not to be very significant plot points, however, in essence they are very important. Despite the coherence of Zilov’s memories, there is no cause-and-effect relationship in them; they are motivated by an external impulse - the silence of the one Zilov is calling and cannot get through to: Vera does not answer the phone - scenes related to her emerge; Sayapin and Kuzakov are silent - episodes with their participation arise, the hero’s constant interlocutor turns out to be only the waiter Dima, and this is a very significant feature in the dramatic development of the play.

“Duck Hunt” is characterized by a special atmosphere generated by the relationship between the generic principles of lyricism and drama. The dramaturgy of the play is largely determined by the combination of the objective nature of the drama, according to which everything that happens must be revealed in action, and the special lyrical essence of the main conflict, which consists in the process of memories.

Drama presupposes judgment from the outside, lyrics - awareness from within. Lyrical confession does not allow low self-exposure; dramatic action requires a conflict that must be resolved at the level of any human well-being. The poetic sentence “and reading my life with disgust, I tremble and curse” is high. Judushka Golovlev, Golyadkin or Varravin cannot be the subject of high lyricism; more precisely, the poetic tradition of the 19th century prevents us from recognizing this right for them.

The behavior of Zilov and his entourage would seem to exclude the possibility of any introspection, any self-control, but nevertheless the playwright forces this hero to look closely at his life and think about it. The gap between the seriousness of Zilov’s drama and that obvious moral defectiveness of the very layer of life from which the hero raised his face to us, bathed in “incomprehensible” tears (“whether he cried or laughed, we will never understand from his face”), was too great and for the concrete historical experience of the era, and for the artistic historical-literary experience of drama.

This is a strange and complex play in which the main drama comes from something that, in essence, is impossible to play - the process of comprehending what is happening, the process of self-awareness, and ordinary dramaturgy is reduced to a minimum. The age of the characters in the play is about thirty years old, it was comparable to or slightly higher than that generally accepted for young science fanatics of the mid-sixties. A significant place in the play is occupied by the official activities of the characters, and although in Vampilov all the efforts of the characters are aimed mainly at avoiding work, some of the pressing production tasks facing them are brought to the stage.

The central character has two friends, one of whom is mean, and the other is naive and straightforward. A love triangle of the usual style is required for this situation: the hero has a strict, tired, silent wife, whom he deceives, and a young lover, on whom his thoughts are concentrated. The usual secondary figures loom on the periphery of the plot: the foolish boss, the punchy wife of one of the friends, the hero’s long-time girlfriend, a familiar waiter from a nearby cafe, a neighbor’s boy. But even this boy is not equal to himself, he came as a reminder of the drama of those years when the teenager was the personification and bearer of truth." But the fact is that, based on plot clichés familiar to the sixties, Vampilov sets himself completely different goals and tasks.

The play presents not the “drama” of the hero, “but a way of life in which dramas occur not from the hero’s active collision with reality (as was the case in Rozov’s early plays, for example), but, on the contrary, from non-collision and the transformation of life into some kind of everyday ritual , where half-love, half-friendship, occupation (...) line up in one tiresome row.” And therefore, “Duck Hunt” is based not on the pillars of external conflict, but on figurative, almost symbolic pillars. And one of them is duck hunting.

Vampilov’s play is extremely everyday, it is literally buried in everyday realities, and at the same time it is free from everyday life: “not a single playwright carries with him as much convention as this, at first glance, “everyday” writer. And if we forget this, we begin to look in him only for a storyteller and a writer of everyday life, or even “a prosecutor of provincial life and boredom, we will achieve nothing.” However, the life of “Duck Hunt” is organized in a very special way.

In the play there is not even a pleasure in words, that unbridled element of words, jokes, which is usually characteristic of Vampilov’s plays. And how cleverly and subtly Zilov’s contemporaries, the heroes of the sixties, reflected, what depths of spirit and moral paradoxes were revealed in their arrogant self-irony and subtle causticity. There is nothing of this in the play, although Zilov is quite ironic and intellectual, and is placed in the position of a reflective hero, and the author, as time will show, has not lost his craving for theatrical colorfulness.

Zilov and Galina moved to a new apartment, the first in their lives, but the premises are in no hurry to become their home. The theme of the apartment in the play is - so to speak - cardboard and plaster. There is no house, and housing does not try to take on its features. The garden bench brought to the housewarming party by Kuzakov is just as appropriate and welcome here as in the park. The lack of furniture is just an inconvenience: there is nothing for guests to sit on, but not even a hair's breadth away from the absence of a face at home. Entering an empty, unfurnished apartment, Sayapin easily recreates in his imagination everything that should be here: “There will be a TV here, a sofa here, a refrigerator next to it. There's beer and stuff in the fridge. Everything for friends." Everything is known, down to the ins and outs of the refrigerator. But this knowledge is generated not by the character’s imagination, but by absolute impersonality, the standardization of housing.

Some distorted, ugly reminder of customs enters with Vera. Instead of a live cat - a symbol of the hearth, which is usually allowed into the house ahead of the owners, she brings a toy cat, making this plush abomination the personification not of home (although something like that, perhaps unconsciously, lies in the gift), but of male bestiality: the cat she calls him Alik.

The laws of the most basic behavior are forgotten not only by the guests, but also by the owners, not only by Zilov, but also by Galina, who cannot resist the onslaught of her husband, who does not know the slightest rule or limitation of momentary desires. This is especially interesting and important to note in comparison with the fact that Zilov, who does not know how to restrain his desires, who does not know the rules and prohibitions, does not even think of opening the hunting season for himself an hour earlier.

The flat, emasculated world of everyday life, or, more precisely, everyday life, is contrasted in the play with another world - the world of hunting." Hunting, the theme of hunting appears here as a kind of moral pole, opposite to everyday life. This theme is not only directly stated in the title, not only revealed in word, but also invisibly dissolved in the entire poetics of drama.

In the stage directions of the play and in the plastic organization of the text, two realities are persistently repeated - the window and the rain outside the window (or the blue sky that replaces it). The window is a drawing on the backdrop, a dead, airless, painted space, the rain is light and onomatopoeia or acting. Moreover, compliance with these stage directions requires considerable tricks from the director and artist.

In all tense situations, the hero’s face (sometimes this remark accompanies Galina’s behavior) is turned to the window. If the viewer should see what is happening outside the window: rain, cloudy, clear - then Zilov, turning to the window, should stand with his back to the auditorium, but if the turn to the window coincides with the turn to the proscenium, then a “biography” of the weather for the same viewers disappears.

The border between everyday and extra-domestic life in the play is the window, to which Zilova is drawn like a magnet, especially in moments of intense mental work: all transitions from momentary reality to memories are accompanied by the hero’s approach to the window. The window is, so to speak, his favorite habitat, his chair, table, armchair; Only an ottoman can resist the window (which is also one of the important features of the play, especially if we remember Oblomov’s sofa). Of all the characters in “Duck Hunt,” only Galina has this unmotivated, unconscious gesture - turning to the window at a moment of mental stress. The window is like a sign of another reality, not present on the stage, but given in the play, the reality of the Hunt. Hunting is an ambivalent image.

On the one hand, hunting is an introduction to nature, so precious for modern man; it is the essence of nature, an existential category, opposed to the everyday world. And at the same time, this is an artistically and literaryly mediated category. On the other hand, hunting is one of the most monstrous symbols of murder. This is a murder, the essence of which culture does not take into account. This murder, legalized by civilization, elevated to the rank of respectable entertainment, occupies a certain place in the hierarchy of prestigious values ​​of life. It is this double essence of hunting - purification, familiarization with the eternal, pure natural principle of life and killing - that is fully realized in the play. The theme of death permeates the entire action.

The image of Zilov is constructed in such a way that the last remark of the play can be taken as an epigraph to his analysis: “We see his calm face. Whether he cried or laughed, we won’t be able to tell from his face.” One should not think that Vampilov himself does not know whether his hero is crying or laughing - the author makes this antithesis and duality the subject of research.

Drama, much more than lyricism and epic, is characterized by plot schematics. And it has a slightly different meaning here than in other literary genres. A dramatic collision - that is, the range of situations chosen by the author - already in itself carries a certain problematic. The sense of collision is a very rare quality, sometimes poorly developed even in the most brilliant playwrights. This quality is very valuable, but not exhaustive, just as absolute pitch does not exhaust the abilities of a composer. Vampilov has an absolute sense of conflict; perhaps it is precisely this that gives his poetics both such a striking attractiveness and a somewhat emphasized traditionalism. It is in the handling of dramatic conflict that Vampilov’s innovation is especially clearly visible.

Zilov is undoubtedly taller than all the characters around him. The level is set both by the position of the hero in the dramatic conflict of the play (Zilov is the bearer of reflective consciousness), and by the personality of the hero himself. Zilov is more significant not because the freedom of his desires, the irresponsibility of his actions, his laziness, his lies and drunkenness are good, but because the other characters have everything the same, only worse. Their interest in life may be cynically carnivorous, like Kushak’s, or ideally sublime, like Kuzakov’s, but not one of them will accept joint guilt, fall in love, or bewitch a girl, nor, indeed, will they think about their lives . They lack human charm that would brighten up their shortcomings.

The waiter is already described in the stage directions as a person extremely similar to Zilov. Zilov “is about thirty years old, he is quite tall, strongly built, in his gait, gestures, and manner of speaking there is a lot of freedom, which comes from confidence in his physical usefulness.” The waiter is “the same age as Zilov, tall, athletic in appearance, he is always in an even business mood, cheerful, self-confident and carries himself with exaggerated dignity.” The waiter is the only character in the play, in whose description the author seems to be starting from the appearance of the main character of the play (the same age as Zilov), and in their appearance, it would seem that absolutely everything coincides; the nature that creates the similarity does not coincide, so to speak.

He knows and can do everything, except for one thing. He does not know that the world around him is alive, that love exists in it, and not lust, that hunting is not physical exercise with shooting at a target, that life is not only the existence of protein bodies, that there is a spiritual principle in it. The waiter is absolutely impeccable and also absolutely inhuman.

What is this calculating, cold bastard doing here, in this play about the not-so-good life of not-so-good people? Why does every time he appears in “Duck Hunt” a painful, alarming, unclear and piercing note arises, like the sound of a broken string, - after all, he seems to have nothing to do with the spiritual sphere of life? And yet, in the ideological structure of the play, his role is cardinal, and not only because the theme of death is connected with him - the measure of Zilov’s drama.

For Zilov, there is only one moment in the life of his spirit - hunting. Hunting is an opportunity to break away from everyday life, everyday life, vanity, lies, laziness, which he himself is no longer able to overcome. This is a world of dreams, ideal, uncompromised and lofty. In this world, his lying, nasty and poor soul is fine, there it comes to life and straightens, uniting with all living things into a single and bright harmony. Vampilov builds the action of the play in such a way that the Waiter becomes Zilov’s constant companion and guide into this world, and this terrible figure deprives Zilov’s utopia of meaning, purity, and its lofty poetry.

In “Duck Hunt,” dramaturgy came close to a person, opened a person, so to speak, from within the personality, it tried to penetrate under the shell of the body, behind the frontal bone, to make the process of choice, decision, and thinking dramatic. Eighties dramaturgy with joy; picked up this internal cerebellar attention, but not yet very well aware of what to do with this attention. However, Vampilov also found himself in a kind of confusion before his own discovery.

Vampilov was the last romantic of Soviet drama. He was formed as a personality in the second half of the fifties, at a time when the ideals, aspirations, slogans and goals of society, quite humane in themselves, seemed to be about to begin to connect with real life, about to gain weight and meaning in it (and sometimes it seemed like they were already gaining). He worked as an artist when the irreversible processes of demarcation between proclaimed values ​​and real life began. The terrible thing was not that in this way the meaning of ideals was destroyed, but that the meaning of morality in general was destroyed. Vampilov was a son, and a wonderful son, of the time that gave birth to him: he needed to know how a person lives, where he should go, how to live, he needed to answer these questions for himself, and he was the first, at least the first of the playwrights , discovered that life had come to that final line, beyond which these questions no longer have the usual answer.

Duck hunting

Spiritual meaning of the play

At the center of the play is the fate of the “unlucky” hero, the internal struggles of a complex, contradictory personality, and the merciless revelation of a person’s mental crisis hidden behind an outwardly prosperous existence.

“Duck Hunt” is a unique study of the devastated human soul. To the main character of the play, Viktor Zilov, “about thirty years old, he is quite tall, of strong build; There is a lot of freedom in his gait, gestures, and manner of speaking, which comes from confidence in his physical usefulness. At the same time, in his gait, in his gestures, and in his conversation, there is a certain carelessness and boredom, the origin of which cannot be determined at first glance.” Throughout the play, the motif of the spiritual fall of this "physically healthy young man": the action is accompanied by mournful music, sounding alternately with cheerful, frivolous music; friends “as a joke” send him a funeral wreath with a mocking inscription “To the unforgettable Viktor Aleksandrovich Zilov, who burned out untimely at work, from inconsolable friends”; twice in the play there is a line that is directly related to Zilov: “If you look at it, life is essentially lost.” Passing the test of filial feelings, love, friendship, and civic maturity, the hero fails in all respects of morality. He is a bad son (he did not see his parents for four years, was not interested in their health, cynically commented on alarming letters from his father and did not seriously respond to his death). He is not capable of friendship: the environment that he has chosen for himself is simply convenient for him - it does not oblige him to anything serious. “Friends!.. Frankly speaking, I don’t even want to see them... But can you really tell us?.. Well, you and I are friends. Friends and friends, and let’s say I take you and sell you for a penny. Then we meet and I tell you: “Old man, I say, I’ve got a penny, come with me, I love you and I want to have a drink with you.” And you come with me and have a drink,” he argues cynically, and then holds a “trial” in the Forget-Me-Not cafe over those whom he calls “friends.”

Service in the office is hateful and painful for Zilov. Once, perhaps, a good engineer, now he solves “production problems” according to the “heads or tails” principle. To the suggestion of colleague Sayapin: “ You don’t like this office - he took it and moved to another one... To a factory somewhere or to science, for example”- Zilov answers: “Come on, old man, nothing will happen for us anymore... However, I could still do something else. But I do not want. I have no desire."

His way of existence and communication is lies brought to the point of virtuosity, inspired mockery, a game of honesty, sincerity and an offended “alleged feeling.” And this vice of his is especially disgusting when it comes to love. For six years he has been deceiving his wife, teacher Galina, who is patiently waiting for him to come to his senses and stop clowning around. His defense against Galina’s reproaches is arrogant, openly deceitful, cynical teachings. To my wife's response: “I don’t believe a word you say”- he, feigning indignation, answers: “In vain. A wife must trust her husband. But what about it? In family life, the main thing is trust. Otherwise, family life is simply unthinkable... I’m your husband after all...” The last word seems to take away the false pathos from his sermon. We hear the same word when he tells Galina about how he “burns at work”: “I’m an engineer, after all.” This “after all” son, friend, engineer, husband recklessly tramples life with Galina, who once loved him, and the trusting feeling of young defenseless Irina for him.

Even in the memory game of the love that he offered to Galina, he is pitiful, helpless, because he has clearly lost the ability to worry, worry, be sincere, and naturally suffers a complete fiasco. “You forgot everything. That's it!.. It was not like that at all. Then you were worried..."- Galina sums up and, leaving Zilov for good, makes the most terrible diagnosis (shouldn’t she know his “disease” better than others): “Stop pretending... You haven’t cared about anything for a long time. You don't care. Everything in the world. You don't have a heart, that's the thing. There is no heart at all..."

The nervously tense dialogue between Zilov and his wife Galina, when they remember their past, pure, unclouded relationship, which is no longer possible to return, occupies an important place in the play.

Galina: "Stop for God's sake." Zilov: “No, there was no God, but there was a church opposite, remember?.. Well, yes, a planetarium. Inside is a planetarium, but outside is still a church. Do you remember you said: I would like to get married to you in church?..” This seemingly casually indicated sign of the urban landscape, or more precisely, of the Soviet way of life, where a “planetarium” and a “church” were combined in one building, surprisingly resonates with what is happening in Zilov’s soul. It’s like in that church that became a planetarium: it’s one thing on the outside, and another on the inside. In essence, this is an object-shaped parallel successfully found by the author, a generalized material expression of the duality of consciousness and character of Zilov. Perhaps the defining sign of this duality and at the same time a kind of defensive reaction of the hero is his pervasive ironic skepticism. Zilov not only uses irony, he easily resorts to deception, to creating a “phony” both in his personal life and at work. Being an engineer in the technical information bureau, he passes off the design of the plant, which exists only on paper, as an actually built facility. Constant pretense, a “mask,” the creation of mirages (“duck hunting” as something sacred, reverently protected, supposedly capable of replacing the absence of a true life goal) became an integral feature of his behavior.

Only twice during the action of the play does real sincerity break through in Zilov. The first time - in a monologue addressed to Galina, who is leaving him, who is behind a closed door: “It’s my own fault, I know. I myself brought you to this... I tortured you, but I swear to you, I myself am disgusted with such a life... You are right, I don’t care about everything, everything in the world. I don’t know what’s happening to me...”. The second time is during a scandal he created in a cafe, when he denounces his gathered “friends” of lies, hypocrisy, cowardice, and servility to their superiors. An interesting detail: so as not to create the impression that Zilov could only dare to do such an act while drunk, the author clearly distinguishes with remarks two moments of the hero’s state in this episode. The first remark states: “Despite drinking, Zilov is still of sober mind and strong memory”. A little later another, clarifying remark appears: “Only now is he finally getting drunk”. Zilov expressed all his main accusations against his “friends” before he became completely intoxicated.

However, Zilov’s revealing impulse, as well as his subsequent attempt at suicide, prevented by the same “friends,” did not become the internal cleansing of the hero. What was revealed was only Zilov’s understanding of who really surrounds him. “Friends,” of course, were offended in appearance, but immediately forgave him for this “drunken stunt.” Zilov himself, despite what happened, remains in their circle, from which it is probably beyond his strength to leave. Evidence of this is the final remark of the hero of the play, addressed over the phone to the waiter Dima: “Sorry, old man, I got excited... Yes, it’s all over... I’m completely calm... Yes, I want to go hunting... Are you leaving?.. Great... I’m ready... Yes, I’m leaving now.”. The play ends, in essence, with Zilov’s return to his “friends” in the state of a man who has only “let off steam” but has not completely overcome his mental crisis. This makes the finale even more dramatic.

Three layers of the play. Plot structure. Zilov in the system of relationships with other characters

“Duck Hunt” consists of three layers: the layer of the present, the layer of memories and, so to speak, the borderline, intermediate layer - the layer of visions.

In the present, Zilov wakes up one bad, hangover morning, receives a funeral wreath, chats with the boy who brought it, calls his friends, gets ready to go hunting, and suddenly, as a result of a whimsical interweaving of the momentary state with the nature of memories, puts a gun to his chest. But friends who arrived in time disarm the hero, and he, having experienced some kind of emotional crisis, which Vampilov notes with the words “whether he cried or laughed, we won’t be able to tell from his face,” remains alone with his thoughts. This ends the play. The layer of the present is not rich in events in the usual dramatic sense of the word and represents an almost inactive frame for Zilov’s memories.

The layer of memories unfolding within this frame is richer in events, but also does not carry much drama, although several very intense plot lines are intertwined in it: Zilov starts an affair with a pretty girl, the girl falls in love with him, his wife, having discovered his betrayal, leaves, but when, it would seem, nothing interferes with the hero’s happy reunion with his young lover, in the midst of a party, almost an engagement, Zilov gets heavily drunk, causes a scandal, insults his friends and the girl.

At the same time, another plot unfolds: the Hero gets a new apartment and, in gratitude, “sets up” the boss with his ex-girlfriend, at the same time this girlfriend begins an affair with another friend of Zilov. The hero has troubles at work - he slipped a fake report to his superiors, and a friend and colleague betrayed him, evading their joint responsibility for what they had done.

The plot of the memoirs is richly varied with everyday details. The hero’s father, whom he had not seen for a long time, died, the hero’s wife turns out to have either a real or a fictional affair with a former classmate, and finally, the hero constantly dreams about the upcoming vacation, about duck hunting, for which there are no obstacles in the play.

In the memories there are a large number of rudiments of acute dramatic collisions, but in these memories themselves there is nothing that would suggest a tragic intensity of passions; there is no dramatic conflict node in them. The troubles at work were resolved, or, in any case, did not have serious consequences. The wife left, “making room” for the hero’s beloved, the girl loves Zilov, and before him is a month of the coveted hunt. Ultimately, even the scandal that he started in the restaurant flared up along with the drinking and subsided along with the drinking.

The third layer of action is the layer of Zilov’s visions, wondering how friends, colleagues, girlfriends will perceive the news of his death, at first imaginary, in the end, as it seems to him, inevitable. These interludes seem to consolidate the structure of the play, “breaking” the plan of the present from the plan of the past. And at the same time they draw a very important thread for Vampilov’s work to that whimsical mixture of tragifarce and confessional lyricism. This layer consists of two interludes, the text of which, with the exception of two or three phrases, almost completely coincides. But, although they coincide verbally, they are absolutely opposite in emotional sign: in the first case, the imaginary scene of death is clearly of a comic and even buffoonish nature, in the second - in its mood, there is not even a shadow of a smile in the tone. But the main thing about them is that these visions seem to objectify the nature of Zilov’s memories. The visions are mocking and malicious, the characters in the play are evil and accurately caricatured, and this moment seems to remove the subjective nature of the hero’s memories, leaving behind them the right to a certain artistic impartiality.

The drama unfolds between a half-joking suicide plan, inspired by the “original” gift from Sayapin and Kuzakov, and an attempt to carry it out seriously.

“Duck Hunt” is, first of all, a confessional play, which is based not on a dramatic, but on a lyrical conflict, not on dramatic clashes, but on a plot of lyrical self-awareness. This was especially important for the second half of the sixties.

“Duck Hunt” was created by Vampilov as a play about himself and his generation, which, according to the playwright himself, did not avoid serious moral losses. No wonder he compared his work with the literature of the “lost generation” in the West. Zilov’s entourage (Sayapin, Kuzakov, Vera, Valeria, Dima, etc.) is not just a company of colleagues and friends for whom he, according to his wife, is “ready to do anything”; each of them shades the main character in its own way and adds its own touch to the general characteristics of the generation.

Dispute about the character of the main character. Zilov and the author.

The fate of "Duck Hunt" in the theater, its interpretation

The confessional nature of the play also affected the author’s attitude towards Zilov, which is devoid of ambiguity: here one feels both pain for a man losing himself and unrelenting, sometimes harsh demands on him. However, it was difficult for Vampilov to fully condemn his Zilov. And not at all because the writer, in relation to his characters, was more of a lawyer than an accuser or a judge,” but primarily because in this case he could not completely separate himself from the image he created. “And that’s who we are! It’s me, understand?!” - he ardently defended his and his hero’s indissoluble connection with the generation of the 1960s. With this play, the playwright summed up his thirty-year life. It is not for nothing that the age of the hero of “Duck Hunt” exactly coincides with the age of the author at the time of its writing.

The complex nature of the relationship between the author and the hero in the play was not immediately understood by critics. Some of them habitually “exposed” the image of Zilov, reducing him to the level of a “drunkard” and a “savage.” Others warned against such a simplification, drawing a parallel between Vampilov's hero and Fedya Protasov from L. Tolstoy's The Living Corpse. Interpreters of the play in print and on stage often forgot that Zilov is “not only a vice, but also suffering.” “Whether he’s crying or laughing, it’s impossible to tell, but his body is shaking for a long time...”- this is how the author described the state of his hero in the finale. His fate correlates with the well-known classical formula (to a greater extent with its second part): “We are destined to have good impulses, but we are not given anything to accomplish.” With the difference, however, that we are talking about the drama of a certain part of the young generation of the 60s of the 20th century, which arose on the basis of the incompatibility of the proclaimed ideals and reality.

All this predetermined the thorny path of “Duck Hunt” to the stage (it was not staged during the author’s lifetime), and subsequently, when it became the property of theaters, considerable discrepancies in its stage interpretation. Thus, there were eloquent attempts by various theaters to “even out Zilov’s line”, to one degree or another to “correct” the playwright. At the Moscow Art Theater, for example, with obvious damage to the understanding of the play, the first scene in which the boy brings Zilov a funeral wreath was removed. At the M. N. Ermolova Theater, the last words of Zilov were removed from the play and thus the ending was significantly changed. There were also cases of continuation, “finishing” for the author those scenes that were not in the play (the finale of the play at the Riga Drama Theater). But here’s what’s characteristic: regardless of the subjective intentions of the directors, these arbitrary intrusions into Vampilov’s text did not at all enrich the content of “Duck Hunt”. Quite the contrary. None of her productions carried out in the 1970s and the first half of the 80s were considered fully successful, corresponding to the level and spirit of Vampilov’s play. The same can be said about the film “Vacation in September,” created on its basis (1979, released in 1987). It is not for nothing that it gained a reputation as Vampilov’s “most difficult” and mysterious play.

In “Duck Hunt” there is indeed something unsaid, unclear - for example, the backstory of Zilov. The tossing and turning of the soul of an already formed person is revealed to us. The process of developing Zilov’s character, for all its recognition and rootedness in time, remained somewhere outside the scope of the play. Vampilov reacted to questions about the prototype of the main character with his characteristic ironic grin, as if they were some kind of “childish” questions. After all, the playwright portrayed not an individual character, but a phenomenon that criticism, intuitively sensing its vital basis, did not fail to call “Zilovism.” This is a kind of moral illness, a kind of spiritual illness that struck by no means the worst part of the generation to which the author of the play belonged.

Symbolism of the play.

Rain, window. Duck hunting

In all tense situations, the hero’s face (sometimes this remark accompanies Galina’s behavior) is turned to the window. The attention of not only the hero, but also the author himself is constantly focused on the window.

"IN window the top floor and roof of a typical house opposite are visible. There is a narrow strip of gray sky above the roof. It's a rainy day."

“He turns around and quickly goes to window, opens it... unhappy that it’s raining.”

“Sits on the bed so that his face is turned to window."

"Stands for a while window, whistling the melody of the funeral music he dreamed of. With a bottle in hand he settles down on window sill."

“A room in an institution. One window".

"Behind window it's raining".

“She (i.e. Galina ) wearing glasses, which she now took off and put on the table. Turned to window."

In the play, rain is a kind of symbol. The rhythm of the intensification or attenuation of the rain can be compared with the convulsive fluttering of the hero’s living soul, and the cessation of the rain and the appearance of a strip of blue sky means the complete spiritual death of Zilov. Perhaps the rhythm of the rain is to some extent comparable to the process of moral suffering of Vampilov’s hero.

Rain is a form of manifestation of the life of nature, the symbol and ideal of which is hunting; it serves in the play as a material sign of another, extra-domestic life. The border between everyday and extra-domestic life in the play is the window to which “Zilova is drawn like a magnet, especially in moments of intense mental work: all transitions from momentary reality to memories are accompanied by the hero’s approach to the window. The window is, so to speak, his favorite habitat, his chair, table, armchair; only an ottoman can resist the window (which is also one of the important features of the play, especially if you remember Oblomov’s sofa). Of all the characters in “Duck Hunt,” only Galina has this unmotivated, unconscious gesture - turning to the window in a moment of spiritual tension.The window is, as it were, a sign of another reality, not present on the stage, but given in the play, the reality of the Hunt.

On the one hand, hunting is an introduction to nature, so precious for modern man; it is the essence of nature, an existential category, opposed to the everyday world. This is a world of transcendental freedom and spirituality, unthinkable, inconceivable poetry, existential loneliness, divine purity, this is ecstasy, delight, moral purification, this is a form of existence and manifestation of higher spirituality, which the hero so lacks in everyday life.. It is no coincidence that guests They ask Zilov to remember what he loves most; hunting does not come to his mind: you can love a woman, friends, drink, but hunting is not an object of love or dislike. This is the moment of truth. This is another life, where there is neither love nor hate, this is the “other shore” “I will take you to that shore, do you want? (...) ...we will rise early, before dawn. You will see how foggy it is there - we will float, as in a dream, to no one knows where. And when does the sun rise? ABOUT! It's like being in a church and even cleaner than a church... And it's night! My God!"

On the other hand, hunting is one of the most monstrous symbols of murder. This is a murder, the essence of which culture does not take into account. This murder, legalized by civilization, elevated to the rank of respectable entertainment, occupies a certain place in the hierarchy of prestigious values ​​of life.

It is this double essence of hunting - purification, communion with the eternal, pure, natural principle in life and murder - that is fully realized in the play. The theme of death permeates the entire action.